


Three Meetings and a Dinner Date

by shopfront



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:06:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5060455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just when Clara is trying to forget about all things Time Lord, along comes a slightly odd blonde to liven things up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Meetings and a Dinner Date

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moebius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/gifts).



> I hope this is amusing and what you were hoping for!

After it happened - _Come on now. You knew I was going to regenerate eventually, Clara. I'm afraid it's just rather what I do, no matter how hard I try to avoid it_ \- everything seemed a little grey. A little more ordinary.

It was to be expected, she supposed. It was her decision and all that - _I don't think I can do this again. I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry_ \- and she still had U.N.I.T., still had her students...

_It's still me, Clara._

... but no matter how determined she was to stick to it, she was still a little, well, bored really.

_I know that. I do. But I miss you. I miss both of you, really, or I suppose all of you is technically more accurate, and I can't... I just can't. Not after Danny. I'm right sick of missing people._

She'd had plenty of long gaps between trips in the TARDIS before, so part of her wondered why this really felt different. Granted, she'd thrown herself into travelling in a whole new way after Danny - gone native, the Doctor kept saying, whatever that was supposed to mean - so what might have just felt like a break before seemed a little more like a dead stop in comparison.

But this was the life she'd chosen now. School, and students, and U.N.I.T. and-

"Hello, gorgeous. I don't suppose you've seen a big blue box around here anywhere?" asked a blonde girl with a grin who had popped up in front of her, eye to eye, with her hair in a pony and her eyebrows raised.

-people behaving suspiciously. Why did that never change, exactly?

"What? Nope, sorry, no blue boxes here. Um, who are you?"

"The name's Jenny, pleasure to meet you but don't mind me! I've gotta run, places to see and boxes to find and all that," she said, and then after a long appreciative look up and down Clara's body, she was dashing off.

Clara blinked, and then gave chase. "Wait!"

But she turned a corner in pursuit and the girl was already gone.

"What on earth is going on?"

#

"So after the war ended they all-"

"Um, Miss? Miss there's a girl at the window, Miss..."

Clara blinked at Bradley's interruption and then turned towards the window. The very not-ground-floor window where the same strange - _Jessica or Genevieve or... no, Jenny. She said her name was Jenny_ \- girl from the day before was now hanging upside down in mid-air off what looked like some kind of cable...

"Hello!" she called through the glass. All the students immediately started babbling at a hundred miles an hour and rushed to the window, but Jenny just hung there unconcerned. She was smiling just as sunnily as before and waving at Clara. Through the classroom window. In front of the students.

Oh, boy.

"Back to your seats, back to your seats," Clara cried, pushing into the middle of them and flapping her hands until they all reluctantly retreated.

Quickly, Clara flipped the latch and swung the window open. It opened outwards, but Jenny just did something with her legs and twisted her hips and then flipped right over and out of the way of the window pane. Clara couldn't help but notice that it had looked... very graceful.

She gave a quiet cough and shook herself out of her own thoughts.

"What on earth are you doing out there!" she cried, reaching a hand out toward her. "Get in here at once."

"Ooh, authoritative!" Jenny took Clara's hand. Her skin felt very warm against Clara's palm. "And a firm grip! I like that. You are interesting, I thought so."

Then she hooked a foot over the window sill and used it to propel herself forward, while unclipping something on the cables faster than Clara could track. Then with a bit of a dive and something of a twirl, she landed steadily on her feet in Clara's classroom - and in Clara's arms.

"Oh my god," Clara gasped.

"Lovely to see you again," Jenny said, unruffled and still grinning. "Sorry, got to dash, not quite sure why I ended up at a school but... Well. These things happen."

Then she was away again, just like in the street. Again Clara couldn't keep up. Although not because she was too slow, this time. Though perhaps a little because the sudden loss of Jenny's warmth from her arms was a little disorienting. Odd that.

"Miss!" 

The rabble were calling her name as she started to give chase. Dammit. She couldn't leave a classroom full of students unattended.

"Right, then," she said after standing in the doorway for nearly a full minute, torn with indecision. She gave herself another shake - _get it together, Clara_ \- and spoke over her shoulder while still gazing down the hallway. Jenny'd be long gone already, anyway. "Back to work!"

"But Miss-" 

"Who was that?" 

"She must be a new teacher or something-" 

"Wasn't she a bit odd for a teacher?" 

"I wish she was my teacher!" 

"She was pretty young-" 

"So is Miss Oswald, though." 

"Miss, Miss!"

Clara took a really deep breath and then made sure her smile was firmly in place before she spun back around.

"Alright, you lot. That's enough! Open your books back up to page ten already, chop chop, it'll be-"

"But Miss-"

"-lunchtime before you know it. Now where were we..."

#

"Oh, you have got to be joking," Clara muttered as she saw the end of a perky ponytail disappearing into a storeroom. Just as she was about to leave at the end of the day, too. It might have been a few days since the debarkle with the window, not that you'd know it with the way the students had been harping on about it, but she'd still recognize that shade of blonde anywhere now.

Clara strode over and flung the door back open. The stomping had maybe been a bit too much. But then you couldn't be too slow when you hadn't even been spotted yet, after all.

"Right then, what exactly do you want with that big blue box you keep talking about?" Clara demanded, arm extended across the door to block the only exit.

Jenny looked over from a shelf, expression disappointingly unstartled and sliding back into that same - _infuriating_ \- easy grin.

"Oh, you know," Jenny shrugged, "this and that."

"I'm afraid I don't really know. So how about you," Clara said, pointing a finger and then stepping forward to poke Jenny in the chest with it, "enlighten me."

Jenny stared down at Clara's finger pressing against her skin, and then her grin broadened even more. It was already a big grin. Clara didn't really understand how that was even possible.

"You know it really is strange that I keep ending up back here. Are you sure you've never seen it? It's about oh so big-" 

Here Jenny stopped to step back and reach a hand above her head, stretching adorably up to the tips of her toes and then bouncing on the spot a little. Clara swallowed a laugh. She was effectively launching herself a short distance into the air in a comical failure to achieve the true height of what Clara was pretty sure was supposed to be the TARDIS. 

"-and a really, really bright blue. With little windows, and some white writing on the-"

Shit. That confirmed it. She definitely needed to call U.N.I.T. now.

"Sorry, nope, no police boxes around here. Bit outdated, really, not sure where you'd find one."

"That was it! Police box! What does that even mean, anyway, 'police box'? It's a very odd set of words, nobody anywhere in the galaxy has been able to tell me what it actually means yet."

"Galaxy, huh?" Clara nodded and made a series of quiet inquisitive noises while she took a careful, small step backwards. Toward the door really, but trying to make it look like she just wanted to lean against the wall next to it. "I suppose it's a box for the police to use, seems rather self-explanatory to me..."

"Sure, but use for what? Donna mentioned something about it being really big, but I remember it looked really small before the rocks fell, so I'm not sure what-"

As she talked, Clara slipped a hand into her pocket, trying to find the right button on her phone without moving the fabric of her clothes too obviously. There was that little button on the side, U.N.I.T. had said. A funny little bit of repurposed alien tech. Just faintly telepathic so it couldn't go off accidentally, but requiring very little manual dexterity to operate. 

Perfect for a silent alarm really, when you thought about it.

She pressed it. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. Wasn't it supposed to buzz silently against her finger when she activated it...? She frowned and pressed it again.

"-I'm really looking for. Oh, sorry about your little communications device," Jenny said, interrupting her focus and bringing her drifting gaze flying back up to Jenny's face.

Jenny producing a shiny gadget from her pocket and waved it in Clara's direction. It looked a little bit like the Doctor's screwdriver, actually, but bigger. More... rectangular. Still covered in buttons and lights though. Figures, for what was probably alien tech. It was always so, well, flashy.

"Multi-purpose jamming signal. Multi-purpose lots of things really, but right now just that," Jenny said, shrugging one shoulder like 'what can you do?' "Built it myself, it's a handy little thing really. Thought it might be good for us to have a little chat uninterrupted - no, wait!"

Clara was moving back towards the door before she could really think about it. But Jenny was too fast, she had grabbed Clara's hand tight before she could escape. Clara thought about trying to break her grip and legging it, but they were pretty evenly matched in stature and Clara had never been much for throwing the first punch if she could avoid it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!"

"I'm not scared," Clara said, lifting her chin. "I just have no idea who you are or what you want," _and she didn't have any backup..._

"I'm Jenny. I did say, remember? I'm looking for my father, and for some reason the readings on this," she shook the gadget again and it beeped alarmingly, "keep leading me back to you."

"... and who is your father?"

"The Doctor, of course!"

Clara gaped.

Jenny smiled. 

Then she rocked back on her heels while she watched Clara. 

Then her smile slowly started turning into a frown.

"Are you alright?"

"The Doctor is your father," Clara repeated hoarsely. "That's... not possible. If you were, you'd be, well. There's no one else left... so you should be... that's just not possible."

"I should be dead, is that what you were trying to say?" Jenny asked, smile firmly back in place and teeth biting cutely into her lower lip.

"Uh huh."

"Well, he probably thinks I am, really. That's why I'm looking for him. I did some exploring on my own, but I got a bit bored; my little quadrant of the galaxy didn't have nearly as much variety as I expected. So I had to find a time travel device-"

She could even ramble like the Doctor, Clara noticed distantly. She didn't look like him at all, but maybe she was born to one of his past regenerations. Different face, different genetics, all that. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing to ever happen...

Somehow that thought was enough to flip the switch in her head back from call in backup to be cautious, to regular old Clara curiosity.

"-which was not easy, let me tell you. And then I had to figure out how to use it, which was not nearly as intuitive as I expected it to be with our heritage and all. And so now, I'm here! Chasing readings, looking for The Doctor. But I found you, instead."

"Guess I'm probably a bit of a disappointment, then," Clara laughed, relaxing just enough to lean back against the wall properly this time.

"Not really," Jenny said, putting the device away and leaning in, entwining the fingers of their joined hands and making Clara glance down in surprise. "To be honest, I'm not in any hurry. Trying to see new places and do new things on the way to finding him again, and speaking of new things, how would you feel about dinner?"

"Sorry?"

"Did I get that right? I haven't been on this planet very long, and dating methods weren't exactly included in the download-"

"Hang on, download?"

"-but I've gathered so far that talking over dinner was a good way to get to know someone. So. Dinner?"

Clara could tell the surprised smile was a little fixed on her face at this point from the constant flow of information. She didn't know what to do in the face of a Time Lady asking her out on a date but- 

"I suppose it couldn't hurt," she heard herself say.

-huh. Dinner it was then.

Jenny just grinned some more, squeezed her hand, and off they ran.

**Author's Note:**

> My Clara and Jenny could be in an alternate timeline, or they could be somewhere in the future. This Clara's decisions were inspired by the combination of her renewed fearlessness at adventures and her simultaneous fear of losing the Doctor in recent episodes - I can't help but feel she's making the most of it while she can, because she knows it won't last this time.


End file.
